1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to operating systems, and more specifically, to Web based operating systems that give users general access to arbitrary resources distributed throughout the Internet.
2. Description of Prior Art
The Internet provides a platform independent infrastructure that connects geographically dispersed users and applications in a unified manner. It is the fastest growing network, richest in application development and open to all systems.
Furthermore, the World-Wide Web provides an environment that allows a wide range of applications to run on different platforms. However, these are typically stand-alone applications, with their own proprietary data and resource structures, and thus largely blocked from interaction with other applications. As a result, users are forced to deal with a wide variety of inconsistent user interfaces. Moreover, users may be required to authenticate themselves to each site they visit, using potentially a different user name and password for each site.
Modern personal computer operating systems allow users to conveniently and efficiently perform all permissible operations on resources through visual direct manipulation including deleting objects, adding new objects, modifying existing objects, and changing objects"" attributes. The integration of resources that makes such ease of use possible is a direct benefit of modern personal computer operating systems. To achieve a similar integration of resources distributed throughout the Internet, it would be desirable to have an Internet-distributed unifying operating system, however, considering the variety of systems and applications, complete integration by such a system is not a practical solution. What is needed, is an alternative Internet operating system for a web-based desktop environment.
Other systems have addressed this problem, but in restrictive or incomplete ways. Lotus Notes(trademark) for example, is a system that provides a complete user environment for distributed resources, however it is restricted to Notes applications and cannot integrate generic Web-based applications. There are a number of recently implemented systems that are more web oriented, such as DocuShare, Instant TeaRoom, and eRoom, however those systems offer only a subset of desktop functions including certain file operations. Furthermore, rather than achieving an individualized, per-user, integration, those systems integrate on a per-group basis to create shared resource sets, in contrast to the individualized desktops enjoyed by personal computer users.
There exists a need for a system that can integrate applications and resources distributed over the Internet, to create a unified virtual computing environment similar to those which modern desktop operating systems create for local resources. Consider for example a user who uses both a web-based e-mail and a web-based fax application. Whereas with the local desktop versions of those applications the user may easily select an e-mail message and indicate that it is to be faxed, this action would not be possible for the web-based applications without a special cooperation between the two applications. The reason for this is that web-based applications do not have a common means of resource management.
Similarly, there exists a need for an authentication service to automatically authenticate users registered with each of the web sites providing services such as the e-mail and fax applications, in contrast to the current practice of requiring users to authenticate themselves to each application.
The object of this invention is to provide a web-based operating system that gives its users general access to arbitrary resources distributed throughout a public network of computers, specifically the Internet. The object is achieved using the same or similar visual techniques of direct manipulation that are commonly provided in modern personal computing operating systems. The users of the system have their own web-based data storage subsystems and file management tools that allow them to register web-based applications, set preferences and profiles, run applications, share files and folders to provide full interactivity as they would do on a desktop machine running a particular operating system.
The invention increases the flexibility of the Internet by introducing means for integration of data, applications and resources dispersed over the network. It consists of a software module hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cWebTopxe2x80x9d which executes on the user""s client workstation, and a software module hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cWebBasexe2x80x9d which executes on a Web server and responds to various WebTop requests.
The function of the WebTop is to provide a graphical user interface through which users may perform common xe2x80x9cdesktopxe2x80x9d operations, such as invoking applications, copying files, and setting sharing attributes of files, and translate them to the operations that are appropriate for the resources that are the target of the request. For example, selecting a Web server hosted file and dragging it into another folder may be translated as HTTP PUT and DELETE methods. The WebTop may also provide an API so that applications aware of the WebTop, can perform the same set of functions as available through a GUI.
The WebBase serves as a general-purpose attribute store or registry to keep the persistent state needed by the WebTop and other applications, including users preferences, application-invocation information, and application settings and any other attribute-type information.